Demeaning Women

The fast-food restaurant industry relies on women’s work to succeed. Yet Andrew Puzder opposes policies that would raise women’s wages and close the gender wage gap and has attacked women’s health care to make it harder – and even illegal – for women to get the reproductive health care they need.

Andrew Puzder has withdrawn as President Donald Trump’s choice for labor secretary, a source close to Puzder and a senior administration official said.

The decision came as Senate Republicans told the White House he was losing support, a senior GOP source said, adding there were four firm Republican no votes and possibly up to 12.

Puzder needs at least 50 votes to pass with the tie-breaking vote of Vice President Mike Pence, and Republicans only hold control of 52 seats.

Puzder, the CEO of the company that owns the Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr. fast food chains, has faced fierce opposition mostly from Democrats in part related to his position on labor issues as well as the fact that he employed an undocumented housekeeper.

“No matter how you cut it, there is no worse pick for labor secretary than Andrew Puzder, and I’m encouraged my Republican colleagues are starting to agree,” the New York Democrat said. “He does not belong anywhere near the Labor Department, let alone at the head of it. Puzder’s disdain for the American worker, the very people he would be responsible for protecting, is second to none.”

Only weeks ago, women took to the streets across the country and sent a resounding message: They will hold the Trump administration and Congress accountable for any attempts to turn back the clock on women’s rights. But the Senate, despite delays, may soon consider President Donald Trump’s pick Andrew Puzder for secretary of labor – a man with a problematic record on women that demonstrates he is unfit to serve.

Puzder, the CEO of CKE Restaurants, put the Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s brands on the map by pushing the envelope to see how close burger commercials could get to soft-core pornography without being banned from network TV. He embraced raunchy ad campaigns that featured, in his words, “beautiful women eating burgers in bikinis,” who hosed themselves down, rode mechanical bulls and straddled bags of burgers. A company press release trumpeted, “We believe in putting hot models in our commercials, because ugly ones don’t sell burgers.” Despite the criticism that followed, Puzder embraced the ads as an extension of himself, stating that they “[took] on my personality” as CEO.

Puzder may have been proud of the ads, but it seems he didn’t consider their impact on the women who work for him. Women working in the restaurant industry, including in fast food, experience extraordinarily high levels of sexual harassment from customers, co-workers and managers. According to a 2016 survey by Hart Research Associates, 40 percent of female fast-food workers are sexually harassed.

The nomination of Andrew Puzder for secretary of labor is a grave betrayal of working people in this country. The mission of the Department of Labor is “to foster, promote, and develop the welfare of the wage earners of the United States, to improve their working conditions, and to advance their opportunities for profitable employment.” As the leader of this department, the secretary of labor serves as the steward of workers’ rights, charged with ensuring all workers have jobs that are safe, secure, fair and providing dignified wages. It is difficult to imagine a nominee more antithetical to this mission or more poorly suited to represent the nation’s workers than Mr. Puzder.

As the CEO of CKE Restaurants (the parent company of Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s fast-food chains) Puzder has overseen a business with a voracious appetite for labor disputes, a fondness for anti-worker practices, and utter disdain for the well-being and dignity of its workers.

Puzder has engaged union-busters, vigorously opposed any meaningful increase to the minimum wage, and railed against the expansion of overtime eligibility. He has said that he “believe[s] in putting hot models in our commercials, because ugly ones don’t sell burgers.” This, along with his complaints about employees filing sexual harassment and discrimination lawsuits and opposing paid sick and family leave all add up to a direct attack on working women.

Wisconsin working women and our families saw important gains over the past eight years. While we have more to do to achieve full equity and economic security, President Donald Trump’s pick for secretary of labor, Andrew Puzder, will only take us backward, something none of our families can afford.

During Puzder’s 16 years as CEO of CKE Restaurants (the parent company of Hardee’s and Carl Jr’s,), the company has committed numerous violations of wage and hour and safety laws enforced by the Department of Labor.

Puzder has attacked policies that would raise wages for women and people of color and close the gender and race pay gaps, including raising the minimum wage and extending overtime protections.

Low-wage workers are least likely to have paid sick days and paid family and medical leave — despite the fact that they are the ones who need them most. That’s why 9to5 Wisconsin is leading work on the Wisconsin Family and Medical Leave Insurance Act, a bill that would provide partial wage replacement for workers who need to care for their own or a family member’s serious illness, childbirth or adoption.

On Thursday, workers at restaurants owned by CKE restaurants, the chain where Trump’s Labor Secretary nominee Andy Puzder is CEO, filed 33 complaints against the company.

Their suits include four allegations of sexual harassment, which were filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission; 22 complaints of wage and hour violations, which were filed with state departments of labor; and seven unfair labor practices charges, filed with the National Labor Relations Board. They were filed across ten states, including Alabama, California, Florida, Illinois, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas, and Virginia.

“Several months ago my shift-manager asked me for a kiss, and when I said no he told me that unless I started giving him what he wanted, he was going to start taking it,” said Ceatana Cardona, one of the Hardee’s workers involved in the complaints from Tampa, FL, in a statement. But she said the company did nothing when she complained. Another homosexual male Carl’s Jr. worker in Oakland, CA, described being harassed by his manager, who told his coworkers and customers that he “likes boys” and used a feminized version of his name.

As a workers rights advocate, I work with many restaurant owners to teach them about the connection of low wages, sexualized marketing, and sexual violence and how to make workplaces both safe and supportive. Some employers are surprised to learn that mothers struggling to make ends meet are much less likely to escape violent personal relationships. Others are appalled when they realize that encouraging women to wear provocative attire to increase sales and supplement their sub-minimum tipped wage facilitates sexual harassment and violence perpetrated by both customers and supervisors.

But then there are restaurant owners like CKE Restaurants CEO Andrew Puzder, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of labor, who has profited from a marketing strategy that objectifies women by placing them in bikinis eating burgers and has employed a business model that exploits workers through low wages and untenable working conditions. Puzder has spent his career opposing and undermining the core tenets of the Labor Department. A CEO who assails basic worker protections such as overtime pay, breaks and increasing the minimum wage to a livable wage has no business leading the department whose stated mission is “to foster, promote, and develop the welfare of the wage earners; … improve working conditions; advance opportunities for profitable employment; and assure work-related benefits and rights.”

The man at the top of this particular food chain has repeatedly made sexist statements and expressed his backing for the infamous adverts that have objectified and sexualised women’s bodies to sell hamburgers for CKE restaurants chains including Carl’s Jr. “We believe in putting hot models in our commercials, because ugly ones don’t sell burgers,” Puzder said, in a 2009 press release. Last year he proudly endorsed the adverts, and stated: “I like beautiful women eating burgers in bikinis … I used to hear that brands take on the personality of the CEO. And I rarely thought that was true, but I think this one, in this case, it kind of did take on my personality.”

Andrew Puzder, the CEO of CKE Restaurant Holdings (CKE), which owns several fast food chains including Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s, has been nominated to be Secretary of Labor by President-Elect Donald Trump. The Secretary of Labor is the nation’s most senior official tasked with ensuring the well-being of workers and advancing their employment opportunities, and is therefore of great importance to women and their families. The Secretary of Labor oversees the Department of Labor’s interpretation and enforcement of a number of laws vital to women’s economic security and right to be free from discrimination, such as the minimum wage and overtime protections in the Fair Labor Standards Act, the Occupational Safety and Health Act, the Family and Medical Leave Act, the Affordable Care Act, and executive orders prohibiting employment discrimination by federal contractors and setting labor standards for federal contractors’ employees, including protection of the right to earn paid sick days.

Mr. Puzder’s record demonstrates that he should not be confirmed to this important position.

Two-thirds of female fast food workers at restaurants operated by Andrew Puzder, Donald Trump’s controversial nomination for US labor secretary, experienced sexual harassment at work, a rate much higher than the industry average, a stinging advocacy survey has claimed.

Many female workers, according to the research conducted by Restaurant Opportunities Center (Roc) United, have been harassed by customers referencing the highly sexualised advertising campaigns Puzder has championed as CEO of CKE Restaurants, the parent company of chains including Carl’s Jr and Hardee’s.